BECKET, Mass. — Jacob's Pillow concludes its 80th anniversary season this week by presenting a company that offers what the Pillow has been so good at providing for so many years: customer satisfaction, along with a little something unexpected to chew on.

In this case, the company is the venerable Joffrey Ballet, returning to the Pillow for the first time since 1965 with a group of impressively virtuosic dancers. The Chicago-based troupe, under the direction of Ashley C. Wheater since 2007, skillfully straddles the line between classical and contemporary.

The unexpected something was Stanton Welch's "Son of Chamber Symphony," which had its world premiere at the Pillow on Wednesday. Mixing moods and allusions, the piece artfully matches the intriguing arrhythmia of John Adams' composition of the same name. The opening is particularly powerful: four men, their limbs snapping and shuddering like overwound robots, surround a single spotlit woman (Yumelia Garcia) stretched in an arabesque, her disc of a tutu quivering around her hips. It's as if aliens or humans from the future read about ballet and tried to reconstruct it without visuals.

The work doesn't fully exploit the possibilities hinted at in those first moments, but it keeps throwing out images that are both awkward and captivating: a pas de deux between Victoria Jaiani and Miguel Blanco, with her tutu bunching and folding like a barrier between them; six women's speedily scissoring legs contrasting with their slowly undulating arms; the four men in a square, each performing a different solo. It's the kind of piece that will yield something new with each viewing.

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Dance review

The Joffrey Ballet

Program: "Age of Innocence," "Bells," "Son of Chamber Symphony"

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Jacob's Pillow, 358 George Carter Rd., Becket, Mass.

Length: Two hours and 15 minutes, two intermissions

Repeats: 8 p.m. tonight through Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Tickets: $75, but shows are sold out, although a standby list opens one hour before each performance

"The Apparition" was not prescreened for critics. A review will appear in the days to come.

As for customer satisfaction, Yuri Possokhov's "Bells," from 2011, set to music by Sergei Rachmaninoff, perfectly fits the bill. All float and flight, it showcases the dancers' strength and flexibility without offering up anything especially newsworthy. Whirling through trios, ensemble sections and pas de deux in their sparkly, skintight red costumes, the dancers might be courtiers who've wandered off from some classical ballet.

The best piece on the program was Edwaard Liang's "Age of Innocence," from 2008. Despite the Edith Wharton title, the work is inspired by the novels of Jane Austen, and Liang conjures up the mood without overdoing it. Liang gives us a charming take on traditional English dancing.

The movement is stately, sculptural and fluid all at once. Time to dust off that boxed set of "Pride and Prejudice" DVDs.